Related papers: White Dwarf Pollution by Asteroids from Secular Re…

Metal pollution in white dwarf atmospheres may be the accreted remnants of planetary objects. After the discovery of disintegrating planetary objects transiting WD 1145+017 (Vanderburg et al. 2015), undergraduates in the University of…

Practically all known planet hosts will evolve into white dwarfs, and large parts of their planetary systems will survive this transition - the same is true for the solar system beyond the orbit of Mars. Spectroscopy of white dwarfs…

Since white dwarfs are small, the contrast between the thermal emission of an orbiting object and a white dwarf is dramatically enhanced compared to a main sequence host. Furthermore, rocky objects much smaller than the moon have no…

It has long been accepted that a possible mechanism for explaining the existence of magnetic white dwarfs is the merger of a binary white dwarf system, as there are viable mechanisms for producing sustainable magnetic fields within the…

Metal pollution onto white dwarfs is a wide-spread phenomenon that remains puzzling. Some of these white dwarfs also harbour gaseous debris disks. Emission lines from these disks open a unique window to the physical properties of the…

Diversity in the properties of exoplanetary systems arises, in part, from dynamical evolution that occurs after planet formation. We use numerical integrations to explore the relative role of secular and resonant dynamics in the long-term…

Multi-planet systems face significant challenges to detection. For example, further orbiting planets have reduced signal-to-noise ratio in radial velocity detection methods, and small mutual inclinations between planets can prevent them…

Massive bodies undergo orbital eccentricity oscillations when embedded in an axisymmetric disk of smaller mass orbits. These eccentricity oscillations are driven by secular torques that seek to equalize the apsidal precession rates of all…

In recent years, there have been a growing number of observations indicating the presence of rocky material in short-period orbits around white dwarfs. In this Letter, we revisit the prospects for habitability around these…

With the first observations of debris disks as well as proposed planets around white dwarfs, the question of how rocky planets around such stellar remnants can be characterized and probed for signs of life becomes tangible. White dwarfs are…

White dwarf planetary science is a rapidly growing field of research featuring a diverse set of observations and theoretical explorations. Giant planets, minor planets, and debris discs have all been detected orbiting white dwarfs. The…

White dwarfs are the burnt out cores of Sun-like stars and are the final fate of 97% of all stars in our Galaxy. The internal structure and composition of white dwarfs are hidden by their high gravities, which causes all elements, apart…

We use the results of realistic N-body simulations to investigate the appearance of the white dwarf population in dense star clusters. We show that the presence of a substantial binary population in a star cluster, and the interaction of…

Observations of planetary material polluting the atmospheres of white dwarfs are an important probe of the bulk composition of exoplanetary material. Medium- and high-resolution optical and ultraviolet spectroscopy of seven white dwarfs…

Close to the Roche radius of a white dwarf (WD), an asteroid on a circular orbit sheds material that then adopts a very similar orbit. Observations of the resulting debris show a periodic behavior and changes in flux on short timescales,…

Due to the short settling times of metals in DA white dwarf atmospheres, any white dwarfs with photospheric metals must be actively accreting. It is therefore natural to expect that the metals may not be deposited uniformly on the surface…

We show that the rate of pollution of white dwarfs by asteroidal material implies a concomitant rate of material ejection that can contribute significantly to the population of interstellar minor bodies. We note also that the irradiation…

Asteroids are leftover pieces from the era of planet formation that help us understand conditions in the early Solar System. Unlike larger planetary bodies that were subject to global thermal modification during and subsequent to their…

White dwarfs are the most common endpoints of stellar evolution. They are often found in close binary systems in which the white dwarf is accreting matter from a companion star, either via an accretion disc or channelled along the white…

With N-body simulations of a planetary system with an asteroid belt we investigate how the asteroid impact rate on the Earth is affected by the architecture of the planetary system. We find that the $\nu_6$ secular resonance plays an…